Although they are the driving force of food transportation in Brazil and other countries, trains impact the lives of people living in cities cut by railways. The closure of streets, the noise of horns and having to wait at crossings are just some of the inconveniences inhabitants of neighboring communities need to adjust to. The desire to provide direct benefits for these same communities led to the foundation of the Instituto ALL de Educação e Cultura (ALL Institute of Education and Culture) in 2008. It is through this institution that the company demonstrates its commitment to society, its employees and the environment, developing educational and cultural projects aligned principally with two of the eight UNO Millennium Goals: basic education and sustainability.

Classified as a public interest organization (Oscip in the Portuguese acronym), the institute also encourages employees to engage in volunteer social work. Every year, around 200 ALL employees participate in educational safety campaigns, cultural initiatives, as well as social and environmental education activities.

Entre as ações culturais, o destaque foi o projeto Viajando com Monteiro, que em 2013 levou as histórias do escritor a 24 cidades, em 192 apresentações, realizadas para 26 mil pessoas. O projeto é realizado sobre um palco itinerante, que viaja a bordo de um caminhão para garantir seu alcance a diferentes comunidades, com o objetivo de levar literatura e teatro para milhares de crianças.

One cultural initiative worthy of note in 2013 was Traveling with Monteiro, which disseminated the stories of the writer Monteiro Lobato to 26,000 people by means of 192 presentations in 24 cities. The project uses a traveling stage transported by truck, enabling it to introduce thousands of children in diverse communities to the pleasures of literature and theater.

Using the Cultural Rail Car, an adapted train carriage, the institute promotes theater and cultural workshops aimed at promoting dramatization and narrative construction skills in school children in communities along the railway lines. The initiative, which received a Marketing Merit award in the Social Responsibility category from the Associação Brasileira de Marketing e Negócios, benefited 6 thousand children in 2013. The institute has another itinerant project, the Environmental Rail Car, which also uses adapted carriages to promote environmental preservation and sustainability-related actions among children in the communities bordering the railway lines. In 2014, after the school vacations, the remodeled rail cars resumed their activities with new scripts and activities for the presentations.

The three projects are undertaken using Rouanet law tax incentives.

Support for sports

In 2014, the institute will promote a sports initiation project. Sponsored using Brazil's federal sport incentive law, the initiative will benefit some 200 children and young people in public schools in the city of Cubatão (São Paulo). The project aims to use sport to help children develop self-confidence, interpersonal and team working skills.

Results

In 2013, the Instituto ALL's work benefited 260 thousand people in six Brazilian states. Half of them benefited from the company's safety education campaigns.

The institute is also responsible for coordinating a safety campaign organized by ALL to reduce the risk of accidents between vehicles and its trains. Since it was implemented in 2001, the initiative has helped to reduce accidents at level crossings (where railway lines cross roads or highways) in the six states in which the company operates. The project involves three types of measures conducted by ALL employee volunteers: educational barricades set up at level crossings; talks in schools for first to fourth grade students; and the distribution of educational materials in communities crossed by railways.

The safety talks in schools in communities neighboring the railways are organized twice a month. In 2013 alone, they reached out to more than 12 thousand children in the six states in which ALL operates. During the year, the initiative was reinforced by the addition of an interactive game, in which children play on a gigantic board, putting what they have learned in the talk into practice.

The educational barricades at level crossings are also organized twice a month. The municipalities in which they are held are selected every year based on a list of the most critical crossings in terms of visibility, accident record, traffic volume and proximity to schools. During these events, the volunteers hand out educational material to drivers and pedestrians, offering orientation on the care necessary near level crossings, such as not parking close to crossings; paying attention to train whistles; and stopping before the line or barrier, since a train always has right-of-way. In 2013, this initiative reached 105,000 people.

Another company initiative is combating "train surfing", a practice which is quite common in the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, and in parts of the interior of the state of Sao Paulo and in the Santos region on the São Paulo coast. Company volunteers distribute educational materials in communities neighboring the railway lines. In 2013 alone, some 4,600 residents in these areas were warned about the risks of this type of activity by the ALL team.

R$ 2.2 million

was invested in community programs. The funds were raised through initiatives such as the Children's and Adolescents' Rights Funds, the federal sport incentive and the Rouanet culture incentive laws.

Art and culture

In 2013, the town Sant’Ana do Livramento in Rio Grande do Sul, on the border with Uruguay, saw part of Brazil's railway history come back to life. In a project costing R$ 1.7 million the city's train station, which is over 100 years old, was fully restored. Since its re-inauguration, the station has once again become part of the daily life of the municipality's population of 80,000 thousand people. It is no longer a passenger terminal as in it was the past, but rather the city's main artistic and cultural center.

In addition to the architectural restoration of the building, made possible through sponsorship by ALL and Banco Safra using Rouanet incentive law funding, the station gained a cultural space. This includes a cinema, the Instituto ALL Cine Estação, and a permanent photographic exhibition, the Railway Memory Project, showing the history of the railway in the region. In just a few months, the building, which also houses the Municipal Cultural Department, became one of the city's main meeting points.